A sign hangs on the porch of the home of Amanda Berry on Wednesday in Cleveland. / Tony Dejak, AP

by Michelle Healy, USA TODAY

by Michelle Healy, USA TODAY

The stories of Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart and other high-profile kidnapping victims offer the promise that the three young women freed this week in Cleveland will eventually be able to live happy, healthy, productive lives. And that's equally true for captive Amanda Berry's 6-year-old daughter, who was also rescued from the house on Seymour Avenue.

Experts point to the tremendous resilience of children and a growing body of research showing their ability to overcome exposure to chronic, horrific situations with the help of therapy, counseling and family support.

Young children "have unique vulnerabilities, but they also have unique strengths that can offset those vulnerabilities," says psychologist Karen Rogers of Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

"Children's brains are more 'plastic' than adults' brains," she says. "They are developing rapidly and primed to take in new information. This is why children under 12, for example, learn languages so much faster than adults.

"When you think about how much growth and change happens during that period, it makes sense that this would be a time of greater vulnerability. But that same growth and change gives children the capacity to learn new skills, develop different types of relationships, and overcome adversity under the right circumstances."

Individual factors, such as temperament and cognitive ability, as well as outside experiences are associated with resilience, says Rogers, program area leader for Project Heal, a therapeutic service program for children exposed to trauma and their families at the Audrey Hepburn CARES Program at Children's Hospital.

"One of the best predictors of somebody succeeding when they have been exposed to multiple stressors is having an adult in their life who is consistent, who cares about them. Someone they know they can turn to," she says.

Even when that parent, or a parent stand-in, is also a hostage or exposed to abuse and trauma, if the child "has the perception and the realization that the parent is doing their best to protect them, even if the attempts weren't totally successful, that validates the child's sense of reality," says psychiatrist Judith Cohen, medical director at Allegheny General Hospital Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents in Pittsburgh.

"Those are very important factors after the danger resolves and there's safety," Cohen says.

There's also been the suggestion that the presence of young children can be a protective factor for the other captives in such a situation, says Marleen Wong, a professor and associate dean of the University of Southern California School of Social Work.

A young child can provide the kidnapped person with "the sense that they don't feel alone and that they're able to give back to the small (child) who needs their care and concern," she says. That can be an important sustaining experience until they are freed, she adds.

One can look to child abuse cases and find many examples where children have no sense of safety or of being protected, "and still display remarkable resilience and go on to recover and live healthy and productive lives," Cohen says.

Essential to that is counseling and therapy - and many excellent programs are available for both adults and children, she says. "There is hope and healing available for even victims of horrific trauma."

The notion that a child in this situation will be necessarily scarred forever isn't supported, she says. "Of course there can be memories of these experiences, but there's the concept of post-traumatic growth, for example. People can gain strength and resilience through having endured and survived horrific experiences.

"It's not that they're grateful for these experiences, but the human spirit can endure and go on."